


What Are You Afraid Of

by MissSunFlower94



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Both These Kids are Fucked Up, Canon Compliant, Couples Watch, Gen, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Mollymauk is a Good Friend, Post episode 19, they talk about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 12:34:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14748977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissSunFlower94/pseuds/MissSunFlower94
Summary: Molly and Caleb take third watch. Caleb asks a personal question, and gets more than he bargained for.





	What Are You Afraid Of

**Author's Note:**

> *slides this in before it gets jossed in literally 20 minutes*
> 
> I am putting all my Caleb/Molly things into a series called In Medias Res, or to begin in the middle. All of them are short pieces that are meant to feel like missing scenes from the existing episodes of CR. I'm not gonna be going too much into future fics - I'm gonna be exploring the pairing from within the canon we've got. Hope you enjoy it!

Caleb wakes to the sounds of watches being changed. Third watch, he figures with sunrise not far off now. He’s warring with whether to take his turn or take a few more hours sleep when he hears Mollymauk’s sleep-addled voice.

“I’ll take it.”

He shifts, not quite sitting up but raising a hand. “I will as well.”

Beside him, Caleb feels Nott - apparently also having woken by the movement in their camp - make her best attempt at sitting. “Caleb you can sleep. I’ll take it.”

His eyes are barely open but even he can see that Nott is not truly awake. “Nein. You need the rest more than I do.” He pushes himself up and ruffles her hair, before rolling to his feet. “I will be fine.”

 Nott looks like perhaps if she were more awake she would protest, but she is not, and so before she has even rolled back over she is once again asleep. He smiles softly at her before looking up and catching Mollymauk’s eye as the tiefling stretches. He climbs up to settle himself on the edge of the cart - the highest area with the best vantage point of the surrounding area. Caleb takes the opposite corner.

“Good mornin’” Molly says, with an ironic nod to their dark surroundings. 

“Guten morgen,” Caleb returns, allowing a smile.

He nods. “Gluten mortgage. Gotcha.” He smiles sweetly when Caleb rolls his eyes. He knows Molly is doing it on purpose, and will likely keep doing it until Caleb sits him down and properly teaches him Zemnian. Any clever retort is caught in a yawn, and the two of them fall into companionable silence.

They’re silent together for a while. Nighttime wildlife seems to quiet down but those animals that wake with the sun haven’t yet stirred, leaving their surroundings almost eerily silent. Next to him, Caleb hears Molly shifting and a second later hears the sounds of cards being shuffled.

Glancing at him, Caleb watches Molly cut his cards, spread them out before him in a fluid motion and then just as smoothly collect them again and begin the process of shuffling again. There doesn’t look like there is a pattern or rhyme to what he is doing, more like he is just finding something to do with his hands. His eyes drift closed, not seeming to be required to continue his motions with the cards, and a corner of his mouth turns up. Caleb realizes he is aware of his audience, and quickly looks away.

The silence stretches on, broken only by the soft _fwiiiiip_ sound of cards passing over and through one another. Caleb is almost startled by his own voice when he is the one to finally speak.

“Mollymauk?”

“Mm?” He doesn’t turn or stop the almost hypnotic movement of the cards.

“May I ask you something- something a little personal?”

“Depends,” Molly answers immediately.

“On?” Caleb asks when he doesn’t seem inclined to give his parameters.

“Is it about me, or about-?” Here, Molly flicks a card into his hand, and uses it to tap himself lightly on the chest. For the first time he looks at Caleb and Caleb finishes the question in his head: Lucien.

Caleb swallows. “You. Mostly.”

There’s a pause, before Mollymauk picks up his cards again and resumes shuffling.. “Ask.”

He is now very much wishing he had not said anything, but it’s too late. “Are you afraid of running into more people from your- from that man’s life?”

“What, out here?” Molly asks, his voice deceptively flippant; Caleb sees his hands have stilled.

“No. Yes. Here on the road, in the next town we’re in – you don’t know what the people you- he knew look like, or where they might be. Doesn’t that worry you, the thought of being caught off guard - like you were with Cree?”

Molly is very still, and silent. “Does it worry _you_?” He asks at last.

“That is not what I’m asking.”

Molly eyes him for a moment, while Caleb tries not to shrink away at the scrutiny. Finally, he looks down; the cards are slipped into one neat pile again and stored away. “What _are_ you asking, then? Because it sounds like you already know the answer.” 

Caleb doesn’t look at him, but at what he can make out of their surroundings. The wilderness is vast, dark, and safe. “You are bad at lying.”

“You’re too kind,” Molly says dryly.

Caleb’s lips twitch but he doesn’t turn to look at him. “You are bad at lying, but you are good at bullshit. I don’t understand it; you act like you have no cares in the world, and most days I believe it - and I know the truth.” 

“Maybe I don’t see the point in worrying about the inevitable.”

Now Caleb looks back at him, and isn’t surprised at all to see the hard-edged grin. “You are _very_ bad at lying,” he amends. The grin doesn’t go away but is joined by a middle finger. Caleb chuckles. 

“I am bad at bullshit,” he continues. “I can tell a convincing lie, if necessary. But - you can- everyone here can tell that there are things I am hiding.”

Molly’s smile fades, and he settles himself back in the cart. “There’s no one here who isn’t keeping something to themselves. Have people been giving you shit about it?”

“Nein,” he says quickly, and that is the truth. He remembers Beau’s ultimatum, _Tell me why you’re afraid of fire_ , but he doesn’t consider that shit. It had been a fair trade, and it cements what he had feared; if anyone observed him long enough they would be able to see it. 

It wasn’t something he worried much about when it was him and Nott, even the early days with the Nein. As Molly said, they all have things they hide and he will not question them on their pasts and they can ask all they want about his - he can dance around answers with the best of them. But since the festival- since seeing Trent- the idea that near strangers could recognize that particular trauma on him means that he is noticeable. Traceable. 

“You don’t look like you are hiding something,” Molly says, breaking Caleb out of his thoughts before they can turn too dark. Caleb raises an eyebrow and Molly holds up his hands. “I’m serious. It’s close, but different: you look like you’re being weighed down by something. People like that would ask for readings a lot when I was with the circus.”

That doesn’t sound much better to him. “And what bullshit did you usually tell them?”

Molly places a hand on his heart with such a dramatic gasp that Caleb has to smile. He drops the act and smiles back. “Nothing I’d tell you, darling.” He leans further back, bringing his hands back behind his head - his posture relaxed as can be. “But here’s what I will tell you: Do you know what I’m not afraid of?”

Caleb thinks that is probably a very long list, compared to some, but indulges him. “What?”

“That I’ll ever go back to being the fucker who had this body before me.” He has no idea what is written on his face but it makes Molly’s smile turn into a smirk. “Even if, in spite of my best efforts, I learn everything there is to know about his life. It won’t change that I am Molly, here and now. And nothing I learn about him, no matter how good or how terrible, will make me want to change that. I am not going back.”  

There’s silence between them again, broke only by the first distant sounds of a bird chirping. It won’t be long before sunrise. 

What is Caleb afraid of? The Nein rejecting him when they learn what he had done? Beau and Nott hadn’t, and he is beginning to believe none of them would. Being pitied? Yes, but that is not really a _fear_. Trent finding him? Yes, absolutely, and for more reasons than he could ever list.

Ever having to do anything like what he did for Trent again?

More than anything. 

Finally, Caleb is able to keep his voice steady enough to say, “And how does that affect me?”

Molly closes his eyes, tilting his head back a bit, almost like the bastard knows how close to his mark he has gotten. “No one who goes to such great lengths to get away from something is at risk of going back. You can trust that - I do.”

Caleb opens his mouth, then closes it again immediately. 

“You and I are very different people, Mollymauk Tealeaf.”

He laughs, his eyes still closed, still appearing as calm as the morning air around them. 

“And you’re not as good a liar as you think you are.” 


End file.
